Modern Style73 Stories

What it is: Midcentury modern style reappeared on our radar screens more than...

What it is: Midcentury modern style reappeared on our radar screens more than a decade ago, but the wildly popular show Mad Men has pushed it even farther into the limelight. Just as the name implies, it spanned a period of roughly two and...

Ray Barrios and Mian Gallardo say their home was suffering from an identity crisis. When they bought the split-level house, tucked into a hillside overlooking the legendary Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, wood panels...

Helen Sheppard and David Cripps bought their house in Croydon, South Australia, for its size and good bones, but they weren’t crazy about the existing decor or layout. “The owners wanted to make it their own,” says Rebekah Cichero of...

Before building a new house on their hilltop property overlooking the city of Bristol, England, architect Tom Russell and his family lived in the site’s existing 1870s cottage for 18 months to decide whether to demolish it and build new, or renovate....

In 2008 these Santa Monica, California, homeowners worked with their architects to build a minimalist, modern home. Several years later they still loved their custom home, but they thought it could be cozier and more touchable. They hired an interior...

Designer Ryan Brown has moved 20 times in the past 12 years. As a frequent house flipper (if he looks familiar, you may recognize him from Bravo’s show Flipping Out), he’d live in homes that were staged to perfection for a few months until...

Most people are familiar with baby mobiles. Fewer know them as an interior decorating accessory. And even fewer know them as a fine-art form. What are mobiles? Who invented them? To start, mobiles are a type of suspended sculpture based on balance and...

There was a lot to like about the living room in Brian Garrett and Stephen Fronk’s 1878 Victorian flat. Located in San Francisco’s Liberty Hill Historic District, the home had 12-foot ceilings and lovely architectural details. But the long, narrow...

Want your kitchen countertop to be the hero of your new cooking zone rather than relegated to the background? One way to do that is to look beyond the basic block-like counter and incorporate a cantilevered,...

A neutral color palette creates a calm and stylish environment in our homes and provides a harmonious backdrop for furniture and decorations. Can the neutrality of beige and its various cousins do the same in garden design, allowing us to create a compelling...

Traditional kitchens reign supreme in this particular suburb of Philadelphia. And that’s exactly what this family of four didn’t want. So finding a local designer to do something different proved challenging. “They didn’t get what we were...

In 1938 Christopher Tunnard — an English landscape architect, a garden designer and the author of Gardens in the Modern Landscape, who was a strong advocate of functionalism in design — wrote, “The modern house requires modern surroundings,...

What is it with human beings and fire? While most living things shy away from flames, we’re drawn to them, using fire for social gatherings, as a source of heat or as a tool for relaxation.
In open floor plans, fireplaces serve myriad other functions,...

Cate St. Hill had already updated her two-bedroom flat in central London six years ago when she shared the space with some school friends. But when her friends moved out and her boyfriend moved in last summer, it was time for a new update to transform...